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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Ever had a friend unexpectedly change from the calmest person on the face of the Earth into a reckless socialite?
They may in fact have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old. Researchers have found that T. gondii produces an enzyme which can increase the production of dopamine (a neurotransmitter which affect mood, sociability and attention span) within a patient’s brain causing them to be more extroverted.
It may seem appealing to some to have higher dopamine levels, but the infected population has a slightly higher rate of traffic accidents and also risks suffering from various psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia. The effects are however, largely subtle for people with healthy immune systems so no need to be too worried if you are diagnosed with toxoplasmosis.
Although, if you begin to have delusions of grandeur and wake up with no recollection of where you have been for the past few days, I would recommend booking a doctor’s appointment…
aamukherjee
Color enhanced Scanning Electron Micrograph of the whiplike larva of the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita penetrating a tomato root. Once inside, the larva establishes a feeding site and causes nutrient-robbing galls to form on cells. As the larva consumes nutrients, the plant’s growth is stunted. Magnification 900X.
ikenbot
A false-coloured scanning electron microscope image of an African trypanosome, the parasite which causes sleeping sickness.
Tsetse Fly under the dissecting microscope in Parasitology lab. Glossina sp., the vector of Trypansoma brucei, African Sleeping Sickness.
The Brain Hidden Epidemic: Tapeworms Living Inside People’s Brains
“Nobody knows exactly how many people there are with it in the United States,” says Nash, who is the chief of the Gastrointestinal Parasites Section at NIH. His best estimate is 1,500 to 2,000. Worldwide, the numbers are vastly higher, though estimates on a global scale are even harder to make because neurocysticercosis is most common in poor places that lack good public-health systems. “Minimally there are 5 million cases of epilepsy from neurocysticercosis,” Nash says.
Dr. Marco Antonio Ramírez
Gustavo A. Madero D.F., Mexico
Specimen: Shark parasite
Technique: Brightfield
A close-up look at a dead dragonfly found in Georgia revealed this miniature hanger-on. The tiny insect seen in this scanning electron microscope image may have been a dragonfly parasite. Or the bug could be nothing more than debris picked up by the dragonfly on its travels.
Trichinella spiralis
Careful when cooking your pork products during the holiday season and all year round, no one wants a Trichinella in their stocking!
Things that’ll keep you up at night, part 1:
This is Cymothoa exigua. That is, the thing thats inside the fish mouth is Cymothoa exigua. Otherwise known as the Toungue Eating parasite, it does exactly what you’d expect it to do: It enters through the gills of the fish, removes its tongue by cutting off blood flow to it, and attaches it self where the tongue would have normally sat.
While this is all rather horrible and nasty, C. exigua doesn’t actually do any major harm to host fish and fish are able to use the parasite as they would use a tongue.
Don’t worry though, it doesn’t affect humans.
Cancers Are Newly Evolved Parasitic Species, Biologist Argues
Cancer patients may feel like they have alien creatures or parasites growing inside their bodies, robbing them of health and vigor. According to one cell biologist, that’s exactly right. The formation of cancers is really the evolution of a new parasitic species.
Just as parasites do, cancer depends on its host for sustenance, which is why treatments that choke off tumors can be so effective. Thanks to this parasite-host relationship, cancer can grow however it wants, wherever it wants. Cancerous cells do not depend on other cells for survival, and they develop chromosome patterns that are distinct from their human hosts, according to Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California-Berkeley. As such, they’re novel species.
He argues that the prevailing theories of carcinogenesis, or cancer formation, are wrong. Rather than springing from a few genetic mutations that spur cells to grow at an uncontrolled pace, cancerous tumors grow from a disruption of entire chromosomes, he says. Chromosomes contain many genes, so mis-copies, breaks and omissions lead to tens of thousands of genetic changes. The result is a cell with completely new traits: A new phenotype.
Cancer as evolution in action, which represents a fundamental re-thinking of the disease, has been proposed before — evolutionary biologist Julian S. Huxley first described autonomously growing tumors as a new species back in 1956, according to a Cal news release. But the prevailing view has long been that cancer is the result of genetic mutations.
